Talk:List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll/Archive 1

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Subdividing

It might be helpful to begin subdividing this very incomplete list into subsections. If it ever includes even a fraction of the large-scale death events in world history it will be a very lengthy list.

Natural disasters would include tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. A category for human violence would include wars, terrorism, criminal violence, insurgencies, riots, etc. Accidents could include transportation (with subsections aviation, rail, maritime, etc.), industrial accidents (whatever sections, but Dow Chemical in Bopal India would go there), Sporting accidents, etc. So far, There appear to be those three meta categories: Human violence, natural disasters, and accidents. Wait -- here's another - disease - this gets tough, because epidemiological issues come up against political issues. More fat eaters have died of heart disease than the total putative AIDs toll, but the heart toll is not widely publicized. Plague would go there, though, along with other epidemics. Then the entire work needs to be organized according to alphabetica interest. Maybe I will return to do this, but if not, these notes can help someone else get it organized.

Fire might be a source of death that defies categorization into either criminal violence, accident or natural disaster because some fires are of natural origin, some are accidental and some are the result of crime. The fires last year in Southern California were a result of all three, and fires of unknown origin combined with human set fires. Oddly, deaths from that fire resulted weeks later from mud slides after rain set in motion soils laid bare in the fire. And fires often result from war and insurgency.

As an aside, the conundrum of classifying fire deaths reflects a general non-scholarly approach to the creation of this document. The subjects of cause of death, manner of death etc., are well developed in various academic studies, but contributors to this document seldom review academic literature before downloading into this cyclopedic document raw information from thier mind or from readily available sources. In many cases, the failure to classify mass deaths into manner and cause categories allows for continued unproductive political debate, the Holocaust being a prime example. Accurate reporting of records that classify the six to 12 million deaths as either resulting from gasseous execution, gunshot execution, unethical scientific experimentation, typhus deaths in concentration camps and starvation deaths in concentration camps are exploited by Holocaust deniers who try to seize the high ground by saying, accurately, that six million Jews didn't die in the gas chambers. In some cases - the Stalinist purges for example - and probably the Holocaust, detailed listings of named victims have been produced, and can provide the basis for accurate accounts of the events that led to so many deaths. This won't happen at Wikipedia today or tommorrow, but in creating these casual speculative articles, it is worth bearing in mind a writers ethical obligations to readers, and to at least leave ends open to point toward later improvement that would include more accurate detail.

Listing the highest death toll in a range might be the best for the National Enquirer but it is a poor approach for a speculative document such as Wikipedia because it embraces the most sensational claims at the expense of rational historical evidence. At the Alamo for example, the highest published reports reach as high as 1,500 but accurate accounts range from about 189 named dead to 240 ore so bodies unearthed. It also seems circular to pin the toll reports on other Wikipedia articles. A better approach would be to say discrepencies of death tolls may be developed in other Wikipedia articles, so contributors could add knowledge to this page without having to feel obligated to also edit the other articles right away. In general, the narrative could do more to explain how the list may develop instead of telling how it should be developed, but I haven't the time at this moment to make the changes, so these notes will have to do for now. Aniighshin 19:29, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No mention of the Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution in China which claimed many lives nor the "killing fields" in Cambodia. I'm sure these figures would add quite substantially to the death toll list. Iam 06:46, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

A lot of these numbers are not supported by citations. For example, the Cultural Revolution is said to have killed 31 million. If you follow the link to the Wikipedia article on the CultRev, it asserts this number based on a personal web site. If you follow *that* link, the number is attributed to "the current Chinese government" with no further details. If you're going to declare the Cult.Rev. the worst genocide in history, you might want to point to a published source. The Black Book of Communism gives the death toll as 2-7 million. Paul Johnson's Modern Times gives 400,000.

I noticed the same thing; that's why I have just deleted an anonymous editor's claim that 30 million died in the Cultural Revolution. In addition, I would highly question the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward's classification as acts of "Genocide and democide". People didn't die in the great leap forward; they died in the ensuing famine from 1958-1961, which was compounded by simultaneously occurring natural disaster. It is better classified as the Chinese famine of 1958-1961, which is listed in the "Famines" section. Zh 00:11, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you're trying to show the highest (rather than the prefered) estimate, as you stated in the beginning, then you're not being consistent. In many of these cases, I've seen higher. Pol Pot was been accused of 3.3 million killings by the Vietnamese. Bhopal and Chernobyl may have been in the tens of thousands. Wally Aug 27 or 28 I think, 2004

Missing Information

To whom it may concern:


First I would like to say how much I enjoy the Wikipedia encyclopedia. One thing that did trouble me though is that when you key in the words " Death Toll" . In the section of "War and Military actions" and " Genocide and Democide" it seems that you are trying to hide the facts of Turkish atrocities toward the Greeks. 5,000 - Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1974)

264,000 - Greeks killed in Asia Minor (Turkey, 1912 - 1923)


It seems there are no links to the keywords . Without having to explain further....I believe you know what I mean.....


Thank you

Nicholas A. Protopapas

This message was moved from the new user log by Trilobite (Talk) 14:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I just added the Guatemala genocide (my first Wikipedia edit, so go easy on me...). The military activities in the early 1980s (and not just under Rios Montt) are generally agreed to constitute genocide, although the only firm(ish) figures I'm aware of are the "over 200,000" that the Truth Commission came up with for the civil war as a whole. --Jon.

Gulf War and Iraq 2003

I added the figure of 100,000 as the death toll in the gulf war. Estimates vary widly on this, but 100,000 is an average figure. However, I don't think this includes people who died as a result of the destruction of infrastructure - a hard value to measure, but it has been estimated to be over 100,000.

As for the Iraqi invasion of 2003, estimates range from about 12,000 - 18,000. These are the best independant estimates I could find.

Isn't the 12,000 - 18,000 a lower limit given by the government?
Concerning the war in 2003, in an editorial in the British Medical Journal Klim McPherson writes:
Public access to reliable data on mortality is important. The policy being assessed—the allied invasion of Iraq—was justified largely on grounds of democratic supremacy. Voters in the countries that initiated the war, and others—not least in Iraq itself—are denied a reliable evaluation of a key indicator of the success of that policy. This is unacceptable.
Instead the UK government’s policy was first not to count at all, and then to rely publicly on extremely limited data available from the Iraqi Ministry of Health. This follows US government policy; famously encapsulated by General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command “We don’t do body counts.” Its inadequacy was emphasised after the publication of a representative household survey that estimated 100 000 excess deaths since the 2003 invasion. The government rejected this survey and its estimates as unreliable; in part absurdly because

statistical extrapolation from samples was thought invalid. Imprecise they are, but to a known extent. These are unique estimates from a dispassionate survey conducted in the most dangerous of epidemiological conditions. Hence the estimates, as far as they can go, are unlikely to be biased, even allowing for the reinstatement of Falluja. To confuse imprecision with bias is unjustified.

Rnt20 21:11, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


We do not need two entries for Iraq, I removed the lower number. I am not sure which number should be included, however, as i understand it, the lower 20k figure only includes deaths directly caused by Coaltion forces. The larger 100k figure is a calculation based on a statistical deviation in the number of people who died prior to the invasion versus the number who died post-invasion. AdamJacobMuller Talk Fri Oct 29 18:28:54 EDT 2004


I added that press verified reports show that the Iraq war of 2003- show between 22,000 - 26,000, but with estimates of up to 100,000 given the above. See http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ for press totals. I added their 22,000 - 26,000 to the troop deaths of around 1,700. So, 24,000 - 28,000.


From the wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaul We have this quote: "Roman rule in Gaul was established by Julius Caesar, who defeated the Celtic tribes in Gaul 58-51 BC and described his experiences in De Bello Gallico (About the Gallic War). The war cost the lives of more than a million Gauls, and a million further were enslaved." This should probably be added to the article. --Xiaou 08:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Explosion category

I don't really like this category, explosion is too broad (it could be accidental or intentional, or arise from a large number of incidents). Many of the information is duplicated from other categories anyway. Darksun 16:49, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, explosions can be intentional or accidental so what? So can maritime disasters, fires, or aviation disasters. The page says at the top that there is some overlap in categories. I took several items out of the fire category and moved them to explosion as well as adding and duplicating. By my count 14 items are duplicated out of 36 which mainly reflects that many large explosions were terrorism. Rmhermen 18:57, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Do things like Three Mile Island and Love Canal count as accidents (well for three mile island at least) or are the effects not direct enough.

Any deaths from Three Mile Island are too indirect to get a true count as opposed to a statistical one. I'm not so sure about Love Canal -- how many deaths were there that you can point at and say "This was caused by Love Canal"? --Carnildo 08:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I figured as much but I figured I should ask. -gren


Riots

This section should include the toll from the various communal riots between Hindus and Muslims that have taken place in India since 1947. Two clicks from this page took me to the Wikipedia page on the 2002 Gujarat communal violence, in which over 2000 people died. Is there an estimate of the total toll of Hindu-Muslim riots in India?

Questionable entries.

I have been seeing a lot of questionable entries added to this page lately that I think should be discussed and a number should be decided on before they are added... Examples of this would be Regime of Fidel Castro, Kent State, Cote d'Ivoire, etc. gren

I don't think that Kent State should be on the list, but I added the French attack on the Cote d'Ivoire protests. If Kent State is removed, I agree to the removal of the attacks in Cote d'Ivoire. However, I will not agree to the removal about Cote d'Ivoire (a peaceful protest that was gunned down) if Kent State is to remain. Lokifer 00:15, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Additionally, I think we need to come to an agreement to what number constitutes as a massacre. If we are added every time 4 people have died, it's going to be a long list. Lokifer 00:17, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think Kent State, Bloody Sunday, and the Côte d'Ivoire massacre should be split out into a different category. They're cases where a confrontation between protesters and government forces got out of hand, while most of the other entries in the "Genocide and Democide" category are planned massacres. --Carnildo 06:34, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would argue that the casualty level are too small in these incidents to merit inclusion in that category. Rmhermen 06:56, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
There is an important benefit to including tiny death tolls: they put events like Kent State into perspective, since they are shown on the same page as events with huge death tolls. I see the comparison of the death tolls of events of all scales as the primary value of this page. Please keep the tiny events. --Ben Kovitz 22:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Riots versus Democide

Willmcw 22:24, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC) The distinctions between those killed by goverment actions seem unclear in the article at present. Here are some thoughts....

  • Genocide seems clear - official policies aimed at destroying an ethnic/reglious group.
  • Riot should include political demonstration, so Tiananmen, Kent State (if included at all), etc. would probably be in that category. Trying to distinguish the two is a POV decision. That category would be essentially for singular events rather than longterm campaigns.
  • Democide seems like a catch-all for government killing that can't be categorized otherwise.

Separately:

  • At the risk of introducing an anti-corporate POV, I suggest that there should be a complementary category to Democide to cover Corporate-caused killings, including the uncategorized Bhopal, and other cases of killings directly caused by corporate action or negligence.

American Indian Genocide

Whether it was purposeful or not, there were probably well over a million Native Americans killed by European expansion from the 1600s through the early 20th century. The only mention I see is of the Wounded Knee Massacre which, admittedly, was a bad day - but a drop in the bucket in the big picture.

The problem with lumping the deaths together into one count is that they're a mix of many wars, genocide by several different groups, and disease. --Carnildo 22:05, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You don't agree with Stannard. I don't agree with Stannard. But that doesn't put him in the same league as Holocaust deniers. I googled "David E Stannard" and didn't see anything in the first 50 hits that indicated that he was to be dismissed out of hand. The worst I found was this: http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html which treats him as legit, but mistaken. NPOV means we don't take sides. You can't say that estimates run from 2 million to only 15 million if there's a published estimate of 100 million out there. -- 27 March 2005

How can there be a genocide list without American Indians? It is like listing wars and forgetting World War II! It should be listed. If the number is in dispute there can be a range. --Samuel Wantman 07:53, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Good Friday Earthquake

Death toll of Good Friday Earthquake is 131. See main article. And please, stop reverting my edits.

Darwin 21:03, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The death toll of the Good Friday earthquake is 9. The tsunami killed 122. See main article. --Carnildo 21:19, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You guys include the death toll for the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami, I don't understand why you see a need to seperate the Good Friday earthquake and accompanying tsunami death tolls. It doesn't make any sense to me.

E. Brown, Hurricane enthusiast - Squawk Box 23:32, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Too big

This article, as it was inevitable, has reached the size at which it needs to be trimmed or split (32kb warning). We should discuss the best way to achieve this: pages for each major heading, each minor heading, shortening to a few examples of each type with more complete lists on new pages, etc. Any ideas? Rmhermen 20:12, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

If we split it into seperate articles on each category, I think I would still like to keep a list of the categories here with the top 3 or so items in each category. I want people to see at a glance: "Which categories are the worst?". Too often we spend a lot of time and money on the latest news-worthy tragedy. When people keep dying year after year from other causes, it becomes no longer news-worthy -- yet these are exactly the sorts of things where our time and money could *do some good*. In particular, today I see that the #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #8, #9, #10, #12, and #14 direct causes of death in the U.S. in 2001 aren't listed in the article yet [1]. (These things have been killing people in the U.S. for decades, so they are not longer "news"). At least #5 is covered pretty thoroughly. When 4000 people in the U.S. die in a one-time event (such as the Trail of Tears), it's a tragedy. But I wish everyone would do more about things that killed half a million people in the U.S. last year, and will do so again next year, unless something is done. --DavidCary 16:50, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If we decide to trim, how about an informal rule that we only keep events that link to an article that describes the event in detail? Maybe a quarter of these items are red links and non-links, so they aren't very helpful in telling us what happened. Also, I agree with the earlier suggestions that we keep all categories on the same page and keep tiny death tolls for a sense of perspective. SG Feb. 5, 2005

Disease

I've altered the heading to Contractible disease, since heart disease was added to the list. Since the list clearly showed a list of contagious and contractible epidemics, I renamed the heading and removed the heart disease. Now if someone wants to put a different list up that would include heart disease and other things, go ahead and do it, but it seems out of place with all the other lists in this article, since they deal with particular events or eras. Lokifer 18:22, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Terrorism

In the death toll due to terrorism, only one attack in Israël is related: 21 - Maxim Restaurant Suicide Bombing (Israel, 2003)

Here is you own death toll of the terrorism attack in Israël since 2000 Death Toll Name Date

  • 30 Passover massacre March 27, 2002
  • 23 Jerusalem bus 2 massacre August 19, 2003
  • 22 Tel-Aviv central bus station massacre January 5, 2003
  • 21 Dolphinarium massacre June 1, 2001
  • 21 Maxim restaurant suicide bombing October 4, 2003
  • 19 Patt junction massacre June 18, 2002
  • 17 Meggido junction massacre June 5, 2002
  • 17 Haifa bus 37 massacre March 5, 2003
  • 17 Jerusalem bus 14A massacre June 11, 2003
  • 16 Rishon Lezion massacre May 7, 2002
  • 16 Beersheba massacre August 31, 2004
  • 15 Sbarro massacre August 9, 2001
  • 15 Haifa Bus 16 massacre December 2, 2001
  • 15 Matza restaurant massacre March 31, 2002
  • 14 Bus 841 massacre October 21, 2002
  • 11 Ben Yehuda St. massacre December 1, 2001
  • 11 Beit Yisrael massacre March 2, 2002
  • 11 Moment cafe massacre March 9, 2002
  • 11 Jerusalem bus 20 massacre November 21, 2002
  • 11 Jerusalem bus 19 massacre January 29, 2004
  • 10 Ashdod Port massacre March 14, 2004

I just can read one of all of them!

You don't tell about terrorism in Israel before 2000 (in 1996, 60 people were killed in bus bombing)

You should have make a sum of all terrorism attack in Israël, before 1967 , between 1967 and 1990 (26 children were killed in a school attack), between 1990 and 2000, and since 2000.

In the death toll not due to terrorism, I can't read any POGROM facts: - The Kristlnacht - The pogrom in Hebron in 1929 .....

If you make a list make it complete.

Thank you for reading. Franck

The magic of Wiki lets you edit the article as easily as you edit this talk. Be bold and add your suggested changes to the article. You may be the most qualified to do it. Rmhermen 15:10, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

I have added a note to the terrorism section about terrorism is a point of view. To us, the attacks of 9/11 were in no doubt terrorist attacks but, to some radical islamists, those attack could be considered political statements or such. --Barinade2151 17:27, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Unless someone has an objection, I'm going to clean up the terrorism list. I'll remove any death toll under 15 unless it links to a detailed article. Also, I'm not sure the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing should be there since this was a military target. Your opinion? July 17, 2005

EgyptAir Flight 990

I'm aware that this list should probably be as restricted as possible, because of the fact that so many of these events are kinda' ambiguous when it comes to whether they are or are not 'terrorism', but should EgyptAir Flight 990 be considered 'terrorism'? I mean, if a single person with no ties to a so-called 'terrorist organization' were to walk into a stadium with a duffle bag full of C4 and nails, that would probably be considered terrorism, so wouldn't a pilot who, according to the black boxes, repeats "Tawakilt al Allah" fourteen times and then crashes a plane be considered terrorism? (Especially once you place it in the context of 9/11!) Refugee621 01:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Deaths in Ciudad Juárez

I keep removing this because this list does not try to show statistical deaths. (see the reasons above for removing annual heart disease death, etc.) If it did Ciudad Juarez would not be major. Chicago had over 8,000 murders in the same time span, for instance. Other cities have even higher murder rates like Rio. Rmhermen 15:10, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Those deaths in Ciudad Juárez are more related than the deaths in Chigago or other cities. A very large proportion of the victims were young woman, and it's possible that the various killers worked together. Besides, if you don't thing it belongs here then the page Deaths in Ciudad Juárez should be removed as well. (Or a similar page should me made about deaths in Chigago and other cities). --Mixcoatl 23:29, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Casualties

I'm thinking that some of these numbers (like Waterloo, Petersburg, Spanish Civil War) are "casualties" (killed + wounded) and not just dead alone. People often get these confused. I don't know for certain, and I can't find the answer myself, but someone might want to double-check. Jan. 30, 2005

Yes, the figure of 57,000 for Waterloo is the total casualties from the Wikipedia article (as you point out, this is a common confusion). I replaced it with an estimate of 14,000 (by assuming that ¼ of the casualties died). The figure of 3,000,000 for the Spanish Civil War seems way over the top. I replaced it with the range 360,000–1,200,000 based on [2]. For the Siege of Petersburg I replaced the figure of 72,000 with the 11,000 from Wikipedia's article. Gdr 22:43, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)


Israel

The article seems a bit one-sided in mentioning operations against Israel without also listing acts of Israeli State Terrorism, which are acknowledged as such elsewhere on wikipedia. Examples include the helicopter strike on Ahmed Yassin, which killed 8.

References

Each entry (number, range) should have a REFERENCE. This is wikipedia. You know. ANYONE can make an edit. Only a reference gives someone a way to check a questionable number. I disbelieve some of the numbers. Without a reference (a link to a wiki article is better than nothing) I'm left with an a bald assertion by an unknown author.

Put disease with disease

  • 10,000,000 - 100,000,000 - deaths from diseases in Europe (millions) and the Americas (tens of millions) from diseases exchanged between continents after 1492

Murder

I see no reason why "2 - Ed Gein, Plainfield, Wisconsin (1957)" is mentioned at all. Even though his killings may have been brutal, etc, this article does not list these events by brutality of the act but by death toll, and if we did list every mudered who has killed more than 2 people, the list would grow hundreds of pages long. Therefore, I think removing this entry would be suitable.--HJV 21:16, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Should not the "Murder" section be divided into Mass murder and Serial killers? The two are widely different phenomenons. Eixo 21:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Tropical cyclones

The list of deaths from tropical cyclones is very incomplete/inaccurate.

I think this list should be moved into List of notable tropical cyclones, with just the top 5 or so left in this article (as discussed above). Note that the List of notable tropical cyclones article above doesn't have a "global" list of deadliest cyclones. In fact there seems to be no good data on this at all (the only reliable sources are government institutions like NOAA or PTWC but these are all localized lists).

Any objections?

Jdorje 19:58, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

black death

According to this article, 200,000,000 people died in 1300s, well this webpage says total world population was about 400,000,000, meaning half the people died, which is not true is it? according to our article on Black death 1/3 of europes pop. died, and europe was hardest hit. I therefore assume this article means total deaths ever of black death, if so it does not seem to indicate this. Bluemoose 15:53, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


Silly article

While a good idea, none of these numbers are properly backed up by references or citations. In addition many of the WWII figures (and others?) represent POW's and injuries, not deaths. Also the figures for black death and other medieval periods need articles unto themselves to describe all the various demography theories how these numbers are arrived at and various widely varying conclusions. Stbalbach 23:17, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Each item should have a link to the in-depth article about it. We don't need to repeat everything here. Rmhermen 01:19, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Maritime Disasters

Do we really need the Andrea Gail listed? If we listed the number of maritime disasters with at least 6 fatalities, the list would go on forever. I think it should be removed.

E. Brown, Hurricane enthusiast - Squawk Box 23:48, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As the subject of a major book and movie, it's one of the best known shipwrecks of modern times. I think a few small numbers give a sense of perspective.

Format

Oughtn't there be a suggested standard format for listing items for this particular article? For example:

where location is as specific as applicable (the city if the event was contained to a city, or the state/province/territory if that wide in scope, or the nation if the event was nationwide, etc.), with the nation or larger region also given (e.g. Derry, Northern Ireland; Gulf Coast, U.S.; Jalisco, Mexico; Hokkaido, Japan; the Himalaya, Asia; etc.) in cases where the narrower location isn't entirely globally common knowledge; and with locations omitted for international wars and wherever else applicable. The article seems to be tending toward this more or less, but it's still currently a bit of a hodgepodge. If such a standardish format (or an explicit decision not to have one) has already been suggested elsewhere, could someone please point it out? --164.76.162.246 3 July 2005 06:09 (UTC)

Drowning in Numbers

Letter by Steve Parsons, July 2002

In a review of Antony Beevor's 'Berlin: The Downfall' (June SR), mention is made of 'the greatest maritime disaster of all time', the sinking of the Goya by a Russian submarime with the consequent drowning of 7,000 refugees.

However, a disaster of even greater magnitude took place on 3 May 1945, when the RAF bombed and machine-gunned the German luxury liner, Cap Arcona, in the Baltic in the bay of Lubeck, south of the Danish island of Lolland. On this occasion 7,700 died, and what makes the incident even more grotesque was the fact that the victims were concentration camp prisoners.


At the close of the war a determined effort was made by the Nazis to kill the surviving concentration camp inmates by commanding them on forced marches away from the advancing Russians--the infamous death marches. Ten thousand prisoners from Neuengamme, a camp in the vicinity of Hamburg, ended up in Lubeck, where they were then ordered aboard the ship Cap Arcona, and fully expected to meet their deaths by being sunk by the Germans. Sighting British planes they were overjoyed, believing they would now be saved. Of course the British airmen did not know the ship was full of prisoners. Yet their fate has been allowed to disappear from the general historical consciousness, and instead it is the Russians who are given the responsibility for the world's 'greatest maritime disaster'.


Steve Parsons

Denmark


Meaningless caveats

"Note that pre-1900 numbers are generally unreliable."

It's not just numbers before 1900. No one even knows how many people died in the 2004 tsunami or the war in Iraq. The first paragraphs of this article already point out that all these numbers are estimated and can be disputed. Sept. 2, 2005

Stalin

Why does everybody keep removing Stalin's obvious democide from the list? He killed tens of millions of people who disagreed with his political views; it's obviously democide, so why does everybody keep removing it? bob rulz 05:34, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Stalin did not kill tens of millions of people, because it was just impossible. The estimates given (30-62 million) are absurd as the Soviet population of that time was no more than 170 million people, including children. Declassified information shows that about 700 thousand people were executed for conter-revolutionary crimes (such as espionage or sabotage), further 1.6 million people died in labor camps plus at least a million died because of the famine in 1933 in Ukraine and southern Russia, which brings the estimate to no less than 3.3 million (the number of people who died during the Great Famine is highly controversial due to political interests). The stereotypical cold war era image of Stalin as a paranoid blood-thristy dictator is not very correct. Stalin wanted a strong nation (whatever his motives), and killing tens of millions of it's workers doesn't seem wise. The people of the USSR loved Stalin greatly. You think it would be possible if he had killed every second adult in the country?

Per Annum

I'm deleting "ca. 500,000 - Road Deaths worldwide per annum" from accidents. The Intro says this is a list of &;quot;list of ... incidents", and road deaths worldwide isn't an incident. We might want to have a separate category (or preferably a new article) listing per annum cumulative death tolls for various causes of death. Sept. 3, 2005

Fictional events

I don't think including fictional events and battles within this article is necessary. I'm referring to the inclusion of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, an event which occurs in the Lord of the Rings. It is not in keeping with the rest of the article.

Katrina Rant

I'm the second person to remove a rant by 66.176.253.86 regarding Hurricane Katrina. I tried to leave a properly formatted entry; please revise as necessary. I left ...86's estimate of 4,000-12,000 dead, even though this is starting to look too high. Please replace if confirmed deaths are preferred or more recent official estimates are found. Sethery 20:05, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Reverted

I reverted the last two edits by PBP because they removed significant listings. I'll agree that there is POV in some of those listings, but please edit out the POV rather than making Mao (for instance) disappear from the list. Please also describe on this discussion page why listings should be deleted. Sethery 21:50, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Because the numbers are listed without a source, and apparently counted the death toll between 1959 and 1961 twice. In addition, because the Chinese government was largely broke down, the death toll during Cultural Revolution "are unlikely ever to be known".--Skyfiler 20:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Cap Arcona and Thielbek

Please stop combining these two ships to manufacture the world's greatest wartime maritime death toll. Conflating this separate sinkings smacks of a POV - trying to manufacture a disaster of greater proportions for concentration camp evacuees, than for ethnic German evacuees. The numbers are horrible enough on their own we don't need to alter them to make a point. Rmhermen 14:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The SS Cap Arcona and the Thielbek were sunk in the SAME attack, by four squadrons, on May 3, 1945. [3](chapter 5, photo 1)

They are separate ships. Many boats were sunk at the D-day landing also but they are all separate ships, they would not be reported as a total. Rmhermen 15:47, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Firestorms

Why isn't there a list for firestorms like the Southern California firestorms of 2003 or the Oaklland Hills fires, each killing over 20 people.

Add them then! This is Wikipedia after all!

Nfitz 21:39, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I realize that. When i first put this bulletin, i was thinking about a seperate section, then i realized that firestorms were in the fire section.Fableheroesguild 22:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

How to Order Death Toll Ranges?

When an item in one of these lists has a range for the death toll (e.g., 1,000-2,000), should it be sorted according to the low end or high end of the range? Ranges are not sorted consistently in this article; I've seen it either way. I would vote for sorting according to the low end, because it would be most consistent with an open-ended range (e.g., 40,000+). Sethery 00:30, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, so if nobody minds I'll reorder ranges according to my earlier suggestion. I'll have to do this in my spare time, so if anybody can help I'd appreciated it. Sethery 03:53, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Right, I've gone through and sorted them. They should all be ordered from the lowest estimate (where applicable) now. The Destruction of Native Americans figure (Genocide and Democide) is a highly speculative one, so I removed the "range" and just left the upper limit. ComaDivine 10:51, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Thanks for taking care of that. I don't think you should remove the range from the Native Americans figure, though. The very fact that it is controversial means that a range should be indicated, and the narrative following it is highly non-standard when compared to the rest of the article. Why should the range be removed? Sethery 00:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


  • Well, I thought that if I left the range, and then ordered it from the lower end in keping with the context of the page - it would move halfway down that list and possibly be interpreted as being diminished in historical import. Hard to do both...ComaDivine 05:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
    • I understand your concern, but the point of this particular article is to sort these events by a very quantitative metric: death toll. It's not the jurisdiction of this article to imply relative importance outside of that metric. I reinstated the range and sorted it accordingly. Sethery 14:55, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Who's the bigot?

The last few edits have been in rather poor taste, to put it mildly. Is it possible to IP ban here? ComaDivine 17:04, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Bigot

I corrected one one of the nasty edits in the 'contageous disease' category, somone had changed AIDS to 'Gods punishment for homosexuals' or somesuch. Then I realized there were widespread bigoted edits through out this page. I am very much a newbie, just learning my way around the wiki world. I saw some info on vandalism in the contact us pages. It seems there is a 'warning' requirement before IP bans are put in place. Too complicated for me at this point. I would like to see someone who knows their way around here to clean some of this up and perhaps start the warning procedure. Now see... I don't even know how to sign this. Dragonflame

Bosnian War

I am a little bit surprised by the figure for the genocide during the Bosnian War. It's written 10,000, but in Srebenica only more than 5,000 died. Poppypetty 21:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Update of Iraq War, 2003

The estimate of "30,000 - 100,000" deaths in the Iraq War has been here since 29 December 2004 [4]. There have beens tens of thousands of deaths since then - the number of documented coalition casualties alone has grown by about a thousand. Shouldn't we have some updated numbers? bd2412 T 18:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

There are few good sources. Rmhermen 00:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
MSNBC did a story on exactly that - Exact Iraqi death toll remains elusive. Afghanistan figures need updating too - unchanged since 29 October 2005,[5] but there have been a few score deaths since then. I recall hearing of at least one battle where 1,000+ Taliban were reported killed. bd2412 T 01:25, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The "official" number from the Iraqi government[6] is that 30,260 civilians were killed in the war prior to the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra. As of this post, there have been 2,512 casualties among coalition forces.[7] This leaves a huge gray area of Iraqi and foreign miltants/military forces killed, although that number obviously at least exceeds the coalition casualties several-fold. bd2412 T 02:21, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

... so adding up all the confirmed civilian and coalition casualties including the estimates since the bombing of the Golden Dome (1,137 reported, possibly up to 2,500), as of this post that brings us to an official minimum of 33,909, and a maximum estimate of about 118,004 (adding up the deaths since the 100,000 figure was bandied). Again, this does not count Iraqi and foreign miltants/military forces killed (including Saddam's forces killed in the initial invasion), and also does not count U.S. contractors. This number will change day by day, of course. bd2412 T 02:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Newsweek has a new super-accurate body count through March 18, 2006 that puts all my efforts to shame, here. bd2412 T 01:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Is it really necessary to update the Iraq War every day? For one thing, that's original research. For another, other sites already do this. [8][9][10][11] For another, it's an estimate anyway. March 26, 2006

I don't see how it's original research to add the numbers being reported by the U.S. gov't and the Iraqi gov't (which is where the news media get their numbers). It's nice that there are other sites out there, but I don't trust them to be unbiased - I'll look into them, tho. The number has to be updated frequently because Wikipedia is, and will remain, the most accurate encyclopedia on the planet. If I didn't update daily, the numbers would be off by at least a few hundred at the end of a week, and by thousands at the end of a month! bd2412 T 15:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Having looked at the bodycont sites, I'm unimpressed - each looks at either civilian deaths or military deaths. Only Wikipedia reports the total death toll. bd2412 T 15:45, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Can we have a footnote explaining what the range of figures refers to - and a cross link to Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 which is main article for this? --mervyn 08:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Cross link done - should make a footnote unnecessary. bd2412 T 19:51, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
There's a huge volume of statistics at Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003, but I can't easily see which you are choosing to get to "36,551–120,061" (unless i'm having a really bad day!) --mervyn 19:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Subdividing II

This page is waaay too long - we must subdivide into smaller pages - logically, we should separate out the natural disasters, peacetime/accidental man-made disasters, and wartime/terrorist/intentional man-made disasters. bd2412 T 16:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Note: I've now broken out List of natural disasters by death toll, which cuts about 1/4 off of this page. bd2412 T 23:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't agree with all that separating, for instance, wartime maritime and peacetime maritime should be together (perhaps they would have to be duplicated.) Rmhermen 00:43, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
      • I was a bit concerned about that too - I won't touch those without a broader discussion. bd2412 T 00:57, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Stalin's Figures

The figures cited here for Stalin come from other Wikipedia articles and their references. New references with vastly different estimates should be discussed in the source articles before revisions are made here. Otherwise the inconsistency is non-academic. Sethery 22:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I had to restore Stalin after he had been removed five days ago. Please don't remove Stalin (or any major figure) without a very good argument. Sethery 00:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

How about for the reason that that it is just Nazi propaganda carried over to the West during the Cold War? There is your answer.

-G

Then you had better first argue your rationale with the contributors to primary articles related to this event. This is a summary page; it should be consistent with the primary articles. Simply slashing out parts you don't agree with is the wrong way to do this. Sethery 03:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-45) toll

Just for clarity, I wonder if the nearly 20,000,000 for this war are also counted toward the WWII statistics. If so, perhaps this one should be appended with a note that states that. Thanks, and please leave a note on my talk page if you respond so I can read what you have to say! JHMM13 (T | C) 06:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

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